> They’re about trying to find out if you’ll be a good hire, which notably includes whether you’re willing and interested in spending effort learning

I admire this worldview, and wish for it to be true, but I can't help but see it in conflict with much of what floats around these parts.

There's a recent thread on Aider where the authors' proudly proclaim that ~80% of code is written by Aider itself.

I've no idea what to make of the general state of the programming profession at all at the moment, but I can't help but feel learning various programming trivia has a lower return on investment than ever.

I get learning the business and domain and etc, but it seems like we're in a fast race to the bottom where the focus is on making programmers' skills as redundant as possible as soon as possible.